Powerless Wire

[toblix]

Although the web is all atwitter about this, I don't think it's been mentioned here. Basically scientists from the future have made a small and completely safe technology for wirelessly transferring power to things needing it. Not only that, but the dude actually demonstrates the tech by ... well, it's more awesome to see for yourself: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html

If you can't see the video:

powering a TV and three cell phones. by just holding them in the "beam"

[Scrobbs]

Not wishing to piss on your chips, because it is indeed awesome, Tesla demonstrated this about 100 years ago. It wouldn't have been small equipment though.

[toblix]

I take it you didn't see the video, then.

[Scrobbs]

Apologies, no, not yet, have company round. Just a footnote really.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Apologies, no, not yet, have company round. Just a footnote really.

Telsa is indeed mentioned in the video.

Cool stuff Toblix! I wonder how long it will take before it's commercially available... It seems like it's practically there!

[elmuerte]

Just imagine in what advanced world we'd live in if Tesla won.

[MrHoatzin]

Tesla demonstrated this about 100 years ago. It wouldn't have been small equipment though.

Haha, that is basically the opening line. Also, the same thing I was tempted to post before watching the movie, so you're in good company there.

But yeah, damn, impressive shiznit. However, because we don't really live in a world in which true capitalism exists or is respected, the existing power structures will fight tooth and nail to keep this shit from taking root. I am thinking of people who make AA batteries, Energizer and the like. They've invested too much in infrastructures for making shit throwaway batteries. On the other hand, these peeps are not powerful enough to fight technology this damn useful, and they can probably adjust to making rechargeable cells quickly enough. A lot quicker than camera makers adjusted (or didn't) to the new filmlessness, I would imagine.

[MrHoatzin]

Just imagine in what advanced world we'd live in if Tesla won.

The eulogy Tesla wrote for Edison is one of the greatest epic burns ever.

He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene ... His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.

[ThunderPeel2001]

However, because we don't really live in a world in which true capitalism exists or is respected, the existing power structures will fight tooth and nail to keep this shit from taking root.

I think I understand what you're saying, but "true capitalism" would mean an end to things like minimum wage... not a place I'd like to live!

[SignorSuperdouche]

we don't really live in a world in which true capitalism exists or is respected, the existing power structures will fight tooth and nail to keep this shit from taking root ... They've invested too much in infrastructures for making shit throwaway batteries.

You sound a bit like a conspiracy nut when you say that. Battery manufacturers are constantly looking to change the way they make batteries and would love to have technology like this. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this research was funded by one or more of the big players.

[Scrobbs]

Tesla was such a motherfucking genius though, he could afford to be so disparaging. He built new machines, correctly, so they worked first time. It is said he described it as being able to explode the designs in his head to iron out niggles and iterate before building anything. What stuffed him though was his disregard of money, beyond that needed to build his next project. Amazing guy though. Amazing doesn't do him justice really.

There were some stranger stories about him though. It is claimed that he said he had been visited by ETs (which maybe gave him the ability to explode said design drawings if I recall correctly), however I've not been able to find out if he actually said that or not.

[elmuerte]

You sound a bit like a conspiracy nut when you say that. Battery manufacturers are constantly looking to change the way they make batteries and would love to have technology like this. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this research was funded by one or more of the big players.

Ha... if only. No, a lot of companies invest in research, but they delay the outcome of the research as long as they can. Why bring a better product on the market when your current range is still doing well.

I know for a fact a bunch of companies are holding back technology. They're not battery companies, though. But why would they do anything else.

[Psych]

Just imagine in what advanced world we'd live in if Tesla won.

Yeah we'd all be enslaved by electricity spewing robots by now, no thank you.

But yeah, damn, impressive shiznit. However, because we don't really live in a world in which true capitalism exists or is respected, the existing power structures will fight tooth and nail to keep this shit from taking root. I am thinking of people who make AA batteries, Energizer and the like. They've invested too much in infrastructures for making shit throwaway batteries. On the other hand, these peeps are not powerful enough to fight technology this damn useful, and they can probably adjust to making rechargeable cells quickly enough. A lot quicker than camera makers adjusted (or didn't) to the new filmlessness, I would imagine.

I don't think battery manufacturers have much to fear from this. The distance we're seeing electricity being sent here is only across a stage, so batteries would still be necessary to operate anything you might want to take with you from room to room or out of the house. Battery manufacturers would still find a ready market for laptop, cell phone, and car batteries among others. About the only things I can think of that uses batteries now, that wouldn't need them with this device would be TV remotes and game controllers. That's not a huge chunk of the market when you consider all the money the battery companies could make producing these wireless power transformers themselves.

[Nappi]

I wrote a summary of an article about this technology a couple of years ago for an English class. I couldn't come up with a subject I wanted to write about so I just searched for an article with Tesla in it. Nice to see that there has been progress.

There were some stranger stories about him though. It is claimed that he said he had been visited by ETs (which maybe gave him the ability to explode said design drawings if I recall correctly), however I've not been able to find out if he actually said that or not.

I like how he was obsessed with both hygiene and taking care of sick pigeons.

[SignorSuperdouche]

Why bring a better product on the market when your current range is still doing well.

Sitting on a product is not the same as fighting "tooth and nail to keep this shit from taking root". I can understand sitting on something because it's not economically feasable or there isn't a market for the product in it's current state, but I think there's enough competition here to prevent anything beyond that.

Maybe I'm being naive here, but I would've thought that, all other things being equal, coming out with a significantly better product would increase your market share and improve the standing of your brand whereas sitting on technology just gives your competitors the chance to come out with something better first.

[MrHoatzin]

I think I understand what you're saying, but "true capitalism" would mean an end to things like minimum wage... not a place I'd like to live!

Oh, no, not in the least. I am not saying any kind of laissez faire thing would be preferable.

I am just saying that markets don't even really work the way people claim they do. There is too much bullying of the small and the emerging by the big and the established, stuff that is never really mentioned as an aspect of the invisible hand of the rational market in the standard doctrine of Capitalism, but that very much plays a role.

If they did really work the way people claim they do, then all kinds of desired technology would be ubiquitous in no time at all. There would be a lot more innovation and fewer artificial barriers to entry, more smaller-scale entrepreneurship, etc. There would also be failed radical tech ventures and a lot of technological dead ends. As it is, the only venue where this kind of entrepreneurship is happening is the internet where barriers to entry are practically nonexistent. And all really interesting development of radical things takes place in universities, which are public institutions subsidized by business just enough so that they can harvest the patents that these universities come up with.

You sound a bit like a conspiracy nut when you say that. Battery manufacturers are constantly looking to change the way they make batteries and would love to have technology like this. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this research was funded by one or more of the big players.

It is not a stretch of imagination, really. It happens all the time. Governments are not powerful enough to penalize big international companies that control certain technologies in uncompetitive ways. The oil industry kept destroying the electrical car. My grandfather in the seventies sat down and calculated that a hybrid car with a gas generator running on some optimal speed, and powering an electric motor would make for a far more efficient machine. Other more with-it engineers probably thought of this before him. But there is large momentum to any system. And when they're already making mad money with the status quo there is little impetus to change things drastically. If tomorrow someone came about and figured out a way to make processors out of potatoes at a fraction of cost and immensely superior performance, do you think Intel will just roll over and die? They will likely buy the technology and sit on it until they've milked everything they can from their current infrastructure. We would've probably had ubiquitous flat TV technology fifteen years ago if there wasn't as much institutional investment into glass tube-based tech that industry wanted to milk for all it was worth, for as long as they could.

Battery makers are small fish. I suspect they may go the way camera companies that died when film died—if they can't come up with better chargeable cells and gracefully shift production, that is.

[jneeriem]

I seem to think of the microwave power plant in Sim City 2000. Seems old news to me given that.

[ysbreker]

I am just saying that markets don't even really work the way people claim they do. There is too much bullying of the small and the emerging by the big and the established, stuff that is never really mentioned as an aspect of the invisible hand of the rational market in the standard doctrine of Capitalism, but that very much plays a role.

Case in point: the movie and music industries

[DanJW]

There is also the factor with expendable commodities here. Batteries run out fast, and then you have to buy new ones. Rechargeable lithium batteries are better, but expensive.

This wireless power supply would be something that you might only need to buy a handful of times over the course of your life, and then you are just paying the mains electricity supplier. Unless they add a massive markup on every instance of the receivers, I don't see how they can keep a business running on this alone. Seems to me this tech would just fold into electronics manufacturers like Sony.

[SignorSuperdouche]

The oil industry kept destroying the electrical car.

When I said you sounded like a conspiracy theorist this was the exact example I was thinking of. The oil industry did not kill the electric car - it just simply wasn't, and still isn't, a feasable option. I find it highly unlikely that the oil consumption of cars is a main source of income for the oil industry and even if it was the majority of electricity production uses fossil fuels anyway. The big oil companies (all of which also produce natural gas as well) would simply divert what would be going into cars to power stations to produce electricity, reducing the costs of distribution in the process.

If the big oil companies were so worried about this why haven't they prevented car manufacturers from improving the fuel efficency of their vehicles?

[Roderick]

Wow, that's amazing. I don't know how many times I've wanted electricity to just beam down from the wall to a device without cumbersome cables. I knew they'd crack it at some point, but so soon! Also, TED is great.

Just imagine though: our kids will grow up in a cable-less environment, and we'll have to explain to them what that was like in for what must seem to them as some prehistoric, 'wired' age.

[MrHoatzin]

If the big oil companies were so worried about this why haven't they prevented car manufacturers from improving the fuel efficency of their vehicles?

Car manufacturers that make vehicles for the most oil-consuming market (US) have been rather indifferent to improve the gas efficiency of their cars for the past thirty years. When oil is cheap, why bother?

The weird spike in the price of oil that bankrupted the US car industry as of late was entirely due to speculation. The oil production kept increasing as the price of oil kept increasing and there was no real tangible increase in demand in the third world.

Besides, oil doesn't really behave according to free market behaviors. OPEC is a conventional cartel.

What I am saying is far from tinfoil helmet territory, dude. I pick which conspiracies to theorize about carefully.

That said, in retrospect, saying that electric car was getting killed was a dumb way of putting it and a kind of a fuzzy example all around. For all I know, it wasn't killed actively, there was just no research into it because it was not profitable. It was not profitable because oil was cheap and no one cared to invest into the environment.

Still. It is easy to sabotage from a position of power. It doesn't take great, visible, concentrated effort to not encourage certain kinds of R&D. And if your business gets into a serious pickle and becomes afraid for its own existence, all it takes is a bit of FUD disseminated through the populace to kill all kinds of things. Look at the health care debacle happening now in the US.

[elmuerte]

if it wasn't for the

[Erkki]

I'm looking forward to Wireless Magazine

[DanJW]

I'm looking forward to Wireless Magazine

combines with this technology perhaps?